Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Pencil Colors!

Remember the days of pencil colors and colorful crayons? As a professional artist, Seal is often reproached that pencil colors are meant for the "student artist." She disagrees: pencil color can be used for texture on gouache or watercolor, it can do immediate "fixes" for color saturation or desaturation. They can be layered opaquely or lightly in a translucent manner.

Seal came across this awesome pencil color set by Tombo(w) and she is super excited about getting a set and trying them out on her illustrations. Apparently the Tombo pencils, Seal found out, are not your ordinary pencil colors. They are meant to better immitate the subtle muted colors found in a natural landscape. They are called "irojiten" meaning "color library/dictionary/encyclopedia" in Japanese. Seal drools over the different gradations of color.

They come packaged like a booklet. Each booklet has 10 pencil colors, and a volume contains 3 booklets. The super duper complete set is 3 volumes: 90 pencils. For more information, you can go directly to the manufacturer's website: Tombo